Some people worry about driving in the UK. Personally, I love it. Don't worry about the left hand drive thing, everything is designed to work that way. And there are things that make their traffic flow much more smoothly. I love roundabouts. Beats the heck out of a stop sign or stop light. And speaking of stop lights, there is a second yellow that comes just before green so you can start pulling away. That's particularly handy when driving a stick, which most vehicles are. Another terrific thing, and I don't know why we can't do this, is the ability to just put a 6 character post code in to the GPS and be directed to the location. We loved this. It made using the GPS a cinch. The car we rented also flashed up the speed limit on the GPS and above the speedometer. One less thing to have to look for and worry about.
There are, however, a few things to know. They have speed cameras that simply take your picture if you're speeding and you get mailed a ticket. There are usually signs pointing out the presence of speed cameras. Single track roads are another thing to be wary of. A single track road is just that, a road with one lane. There are spots to pull over for oncoming traffic and you get a feel for them pretty quickly.
Back to our travels. After packing up we headed over to the Elephant House where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter. Emmie had never been so we dropped off the kids and searched for parking. None was to be had so I just pulled over and Elizabeth ran in to get some food and tell the kids to get their orders to go. Then we headed out of Edinburgh for Stirling. We had visited Stirling before on a previous visit when Natalie had been at the University there so we swung through and stopped at a Tesco to grab some lunch. We didn't stop there but Stirling Castle looked as beautiful as ever and we saw the Wallace Monument in the distance.
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| The kids at the Elephant House, birthplace of Harry Potter. |
We then headed north and west to the southern Highlands. It is beautiful country. It snowed on us most of the way across so I didn't get to see much. We did stop at a Loch along the way for a picture, I think it was Loch Lubnaig. As we headed up into the mountains the snow got worse. We actually passed the Glencoe visitors center without even knowing it. There was one section that looked like a winterized version of the Dead Marshes from The Return of the King. We'll have to go back in the summer some time.
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| Our mighty steed |
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| Waiting for the Corran ferry |
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| Loch Lubnaig (I think) |
We made a pit stop in Tyndrum before heading on. Our friend's in Mull had been kind enough to provide us directions. We had a couple of ferries we had to catch or we'd be stuck. It was beautiful country. Our first ferry was from Corran to Ardgour. We crossed with no problem and then turned southwest along the Morvern coast by Loch Linnhe. As we turned on to a single track road it was suddenly a Grand Prix race with everyone just flying down this one lane. We couldn't understand why. There was plenty of time to catch one of the last three ferries. Welllll, not exactly. We didn't know it but we had the times wrong and there were only 2 ferries left. As we pulled in to the landing at Lochaline a ferry was leaving. We checked the schedule and there was only one left! It was getting dark as we boarded the ferry from Lochaline to Fishnish. We made the crossing to Mull with no trouble and then headed to Tobermory where we were booked at the Western Isles Hotel.  |
| Tobermory as we pulled into town |
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